Do We Have A Clue Who Starts vs City ?

Well the new season is only a few days away and the real stuff is truly upon us. Arsene has really gone and the new breed are bedding in. I’m not totally sure there are more differences than matches in the way things are set up now, of course apart from the set up which has evolved over the last couple of seasons and is now totally different if you know what I mean.

The preseason has ended, and the season starts with us, as are most other clubs, still looking like we are in preseason, its all very strange. We certainly look like we need another four games to gel the starting eleven as these half a half games really don’t give you a good idea of how the team will perform over ninety minutes and against sides that will perform over ninety minutes, the whole thing is one big anomaly.

Would anyone have said Unai’s reign would start with Ainsley as the only sure-fire starter in the whole squad? I know there are other players probably with their name already on the first team sheet, however, the strength of the squad that has been build up over the last few seasons is such we really have different players for every position and again those players could interchange depending on the system we decide to adopt.

We know Cech is approaching his twilight years, but Leno is a top-quality keeper? Although I think the more experienced man will get the nod the decision will be close. As time goes on Leno’s distribution above anything else will make him the clear winner as we play the ball out from the back more and more and just as happened at city the necessity to have a footballing keeper will determine the pick.

At right back its close again but Stephan’s lack of game time with us will see Hector get the nod. As for the CB’s I am a massive fan of the Rob and Callum partnership and I believe they are the best footballing pair we have however, I again think the more experienced duo of Shkodran and Sokratis will start the first game.

The Midfield becomes difficult to call as systems, fitness and cohesiveness all come into play here. I’m guessing that as were at home and judging by the friendlies the midfield three will be Aaron, if fit, Guendouzi and Granit although Elneny could cover anyone of these three if needed.

Up front It would be Pierre, Henrikh and Mesut in quite an attacking line up and Laca unfairly missing out but that’s the quality we have at present.

That would leave the bench looking like Leno, Stephan, Callum, Lucas, Elneny, Alex and Lacazette. So, most of the new lads starting their ARSENAL careers from the bench and most the youngsters missing out for the first game. I do think Eddie is very close and will get game time soon as will they all in Europe.

So, in conclusion, we’re not ready, but maybe readier than some of the unready we are playing early. There are things to be worked on and ironed out but in the main the preseason has gone well, and the integration of players has gelled quite nicely. Of course, I’m massively excited for next Sunday and will very nervous coming up to kick off.

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141 comments on “Do We Have A Clue Who Starts vs City ?”

Think he’s capable of 10-15 goals in prem if playing all the time, as well as being a threat against us as an opponent; but still think with age, our budget, career to date with us and, crucially, with options we have, it’s right move.

Welbeck is a bit different. Much more attached to him and exit would leave us vulnerable should one of Laca or Aubameyang suffer injury.

The plus would be it leaves Nelson, Smith-Rowe and particularly Nketiah very close to match day reckoning with 1st team. All fans say they are desperately keen for their youngsters to make it but many don’t demonstrate it with their views and actions at the crunch.

Not to say i’m all that different- my ears do perk up, to say least, with talk of signings.

Anyway, we’ll see. But if we’re talking best chances of any youngsters making it, a clearer route is extremely helpful.

Looks like we’ll be left wondering if those strong links to Soyuncu were mostly bullshit.

The fact the price mentioned for us was 35 (£) million when he’s gone for half that suggests it probably was.

As usual, I feel a bit weird when someone we were heavily linked with and someone I hoped we’d get (based only on profile and an impressive looking youtube clip!!) ends up elsewhere in league for a reasonable-looking price.

That’s all almost entirely on me, but still leaves me hoping- sorry, Caglar- he doesn’t do particularly well.

spurs sign no player, the first club ever since the transfer window came in to not sign a player, and yet journo’s and pundits are lining up to praise it, to find all sorts of excuses for it, to come up with silly ways of how its actually a good thing.
contrast that with how arsenal transfer business has been treated by these same muppets.

Carl Jenkinson still at Arsenal, he signed for us 7 years ago, he looks very unlikely to get many if any games for us this coming season. 62 games for us in his 7 years.
Joel Campbell still here too, again signed 7 years ago, has played 40 games for us in that time,

reports are that Ospina has agreed a deal with Besiktas, and will be completed in coming days.

I find it a bit odd that some of our youths have not been loaned out to championship or league 1 clubs today,

still no word about Josh DaSilva, and if he is still an AFC player or has left.

George
Might be too late but:
The challenge of managing an Arsenal team’s fitness over the course of a season, managing Ramsey as well as he was looked after last year, these are the biggest challenges for the new gaffer IMO.
And how he will react to the pgMOB handicap (Young Pep in his first season was not amused, and therefore went and spent half a billion the following summer).

Ed
The Mail did an article on that exact subject; Spurs being the only PL club ever not to sign a player.
By all the reports I’ve read they did attempt to sigh Grealish, and I’m glad they didn’t: he would have been good for them.
Looks like they’re already finding the new stadium a bit of a white elephant. No chance of Lewis funding any of the loan repayments, so years of this to come.

Believe there is still time for players to be loaned to lower divisions or Europe, some f ours could leave that way yet?
Really don’t like transfer deadline days, flouting of supposed FFP laid bare and glorified by the media, Everton, well, suppose it is a small taster of what’s to come if Usmanov gets his foot in. Also heard Fulham spent 100 million? No way Liverpool have kept wage increases below 7%. Then , I have this horrible deja vu thing, of losing decent defenders and seemingly not replacing them, until Kos returns, it seems we have very inexperienced central defenders. Monreal can slot in there I guess. What I am saying, getting the same uneasy feeling over selling Chambers as I had with Gabriel, but guess we have to just trust the powers that be.
Then the Ramsey conundrum. But glad Danny, is, I assume, staying albeit in the final year of his contract

Jenkinson went back to West Ham for a 2nd year in 15/16 (Bilic had taken over by then) and did his ACL bout halfway through year.

Played handful of games for us 16/17 and had a pretty rough time before Weng took him out, citing confidence. Didn’t play after january (apparently fee agreed with Palace, linking with Allaryce again, but couldn’t agree wages)

Lat year got a bad shoulder injury first game of season a tB’ham. Back in team January, 5 games then left out for rest of year.

His career likely would have been very different without injury, though don’t think he’d have claimed starting spot for us.

Now it seems there’s real difficulty getting a new start thanks to wages. Understandable enough as I’m sure any offer would be a huge drop, though it would also be understandable if he was desperate to get playing again.

Shocks me to see the lack of sympathy for player though, and how people slam club for him still being here when at the time of the contract it made sense (and the critics would be first to moan he left cheap/free then and succeeded elsewhere).

Echoes of the way morons, our morons mostly, hammered us over Diaby (or even said we were so loyal to him), when all that matters is the situation when the contract was offered- in Diaby’s case when he was 24/25 and it was a more than sensible thing to do to offer him a good contract.

Rich
I hadn’t realised Jenks’ had such a catalogue of quite serious injuries and it’s no wonder he’s not progressed in his development. I suppose there’s still time if he’s prepared to take his chances on the few occasions he’s likely to get any although another loan seems the best bet though.
Comparisons with Diaby aren’t really relevant IMO. A player who probably would have made it to world class status had his career criminally (and I don’t use that word lightly) shortened, while Jenks will probably never be any more than Championship standard.
Has my sympathy, particularly now I know the full circumstances, so thanks for that.

–
Poor old Timmy Payton must be reading about these agent fees up at Everton and feeling very low at the moment. Haha!
We’re talking about the kind of agent fees that have made Ed “where’s me wallet” Woodward blush with embarrassment.

These are the people the AST went “all in” with. For whom the Arseblagger penned a hilarious obituary in the Manchester Grunt.

❗️Today, Barça rejected a bid by Arsenal for Dembélé. Arsenal would pay €10m now and then €90m at the end of the season. Barça didn’t think the offer made any sense. [rac1]

How funny,the way this is being comunicated, Clearly as a dig the whole ‘£40 million and a £’ thing

Barcelona need the money , Barca need the deal done like this to support the club. Normally the payments in a deal of this magnitude is usually paid out over the course of a contract (For amortisation ). So for Arsenal to pay the whole 100 million Euro in a year, I am not sure why they would do it except to make the longer term saving.

compare and contrast the reaction to the make up of our squad and our transfer business, both in the media and in AFC blogs, and on twitter etc

Soundbite is king – really must give credit to the Arsenal PR team for setting the tone, a wonderful job, what a pity they didn’t do that in previous years. Maybe we got new PR men as part of the New Regime

Wouldn’t have problem keeping Jenko25 & JC35 on the books till January. Could do their confidence quite a bit of good being included in Emery 1.0. We didn’t sign a winger but JC’ll probably be off by the end of the month unless UE thinks otherwise.

Loaning out Chambers places more responsibility on Holding & Mavropanos. I hope they are up to it. Hopefully young Bielik also gets to spend an injury-free year training with the 1st team. Nelson, Nketiah & Smith-Rowe look to have played themselves into contention so it is still possible to transition for Krystian & Joe Willock. Best of luck to them.

I’m curious to see what the much-desired Caglar Soyuncu has to offer. Hope he doesn’t turn out to be another great-in-the-making like Maguire, Nzonzi & Robertson, 3 players I “lusted” after in the past.

WwwB,
Barca might come to regret declining our offer. Dembele is great but overpriced.
If he’s still not played enough by January we could get him for less. Leon Bailey @ 40m is another option. Messrs Nelson & Smith-Rowe might just obliterate the need for winger-spending….we wait and we wonder.

I know VAR’s not due for at least another season, but with all the PR etc from the World Cup we could hope to get some more balanced & transparent refereeing this time round.
Perhaps we may even get an idea of if it was Wenger or the club or both that the PGMO hates so much.

Comparison was purely about contract and the way some refuse to understand that whether we were right or wrong to offer a long-term contract should only be judged on what the circumstances were when the contract was offered.

This is especially true when a player is hit terribly by injuries after the contract has been signed.

Diaby’s was a no-brainer. The very same people who used it as evidence of us/ Wenger being foolish/ inefficient/ too loyal would have been incandescent had we not offered a sufficiently attractive contract, lost him, and he’d gone on to the great success he would have had if not for injury.

Same people, I reckon, who fume the most and speak with most certainty when our players contracts aren’t renewed early.

Jenkinson a different case but, I’m guessing, we gave him a new long contract after that promising year at West Ham, when he was an improving home-grown youngster (bout 22?) with a respectable amount of appearances and a decent injury record to then.

Had to cut a few people, who I’d never been that fond of anyway, from twitter this week for lame jokes and worse about Jenkinson.

I’d bet that at any one time any squad has a number of players who haven’t delivered great value for money on their fees/contracts (and some who have); some because of injuries, others because they didn’t deliver on early promise, etc.

I very much doubt we are among the worst and think we are probably one of the best, in the higher echelons at least. Not sure about last year but know that before that Wenger pretty much never underperformed on our budget.

I’m going into the City game, with Oliver, same as I have for last decade or so : fearing pen situations especially. Expecting us not to get ones we should and vulnerable to conceding ones we shouldn’t.

Wait until Usmanov joins them Rich.
Would be nice if anchor man Presenters at least tried to disguise bias, agendas influences and heaven knows what else.
Whenever he mentions Everton, it is often followed immediately by the word ambition, of course no mention of murky subjects like FFP or where this new found money is coming from. such things are also missing from the analysis of Liverpool and some others, just praise for lavish spending
He was also extremely disparaging about Kroenke, and Wenger last year when Usmanov was reportedly trying to buy out Stan

📻Here you are Gooners! Fresh out the oven.. a new episode of Gooner & Gunner Radio! We're joined by the one & only @arseblagger to discuss Stan Kroenke's take-over, Wenger, Chambers, youth players breaking through & a lot more: https://t.co/gQTtZbva3B … ✌️🔴⚪️

Mandy you will find that Jim White is in the pocket of Usmanov, he was his “special guest”, in his private box at Arsenal on several occasions last season, usually just before either R&W or AST released a statement slamming AFC for something or other. Ian Wright usually a guest at same time. When you put it all together is explains a lot

Oh well, should have acted a long time ago, but from now on, the off or change channel facilities will be used immediatly on seeing or hearing Jim White in the future.
Sadly, I suspect Usmanov may put so much money into Everton, this puppet will have rather a lot to crow about in the future, I suspect at Arsenals expense so wont be listening to that, or anything else he has to say.
The man sounds pathetic.

Quite amusing that the so many so called ITKs fell for that Dembele story , including Kike Marin, only for Ornstein to shoot them down.
Dembele looks a fantastic prospect, but has had a season where he has done very little, partly down to injury. He still has more to prove before becoming available at such a price, at least to a sensibly run club.
Personally, I am looking forward to seeing some of our kids get a chance